Happy New Year from BraveWords and all the best for a headbanging 2014! To honour tradition, we always follow our annual BravePicks by handing over the pen to our devout scribes and let them speak out about the year that was and the year ahead of us!

So now we present each writer's take on 2013 with the always popular Brave Embarrassments, Concerts, Thoughts On 2013, Predictions For 2014 and What / Who Needs To Stop In 2014!

2013 … The Scribes Speak

Martin Popoff - Top 10 Of 2013

1) CLUTCH - Earth Rocker (Weathermaker Music)

2) CARCASS – Surgical Steel (Nuclear Blast)

3) MOTÖRHEAD – Aftershock (UDR)

4) VOIVOD – Target Earth (Century Media)

5) MONSTER MAGNET – Last Patrol (Napalm)

6) MEGADETH – Super Collider (Universal)

7) CATHEDRAL - The Last Spire (Rise Above/Metal Blade)

8) BLACK STAR RIDERS - All Hell Breaks Loose (Nuclear Blast)

9) DEATH ANGEL - The Dream Calls For Blood (Nuclear Blast)

10) UDO – Steelhammer (AFM)

Top 3 Concerts

1) Y&T; – Rockpile – Toronto, ON

2) LIVING COLOUR – The Opera House – Toronto, ON

3) CLUTCH – Sound Academy – Toronto, ON

Top 3 Brave Embarrassments

1) BLACK SABBATH without Bill Ward. Man, I just don’t like messes like this, especially when it’s rubbed in with all those stupid trio photo shoots. Urgh.

2) Two QUEENSRŸCHEs. I just wish both of them weren’t so good so I could easily pick sides.

3) Two HAWKWINDs. After hearing the inside scoop on the whole sordid debacle, and interviewing both Dave and Nik months apart, I couldn’t bring myself to go to the one that didn’t cancel because of the other.

Metal Predictions For 2014

We’re going to need gatekeepers, i.e. record reviewers even more moving forward. With so little physical product, and still, so much new music all the time, respected press and reviewing and features (which is actually all virtual and in the ether as well) is going to continue to matter as a way of disseminating and receiving information, of filtering, when there is so much noise competing for our attentions.

Thoughts On 2013

Yeah, one big thought., and actually a major upheaval for my brain. Streaming for free or $5 a month or whatever... it’s really causing me to question owning all these CDs and records and even mp3s. So I am selling off lots of things I thought I’d keep to my grave. What’s more, it’s caused me to fall away from new music because there are just so many things to study new and old. Guess what I’m saying, a thousand new things is now competing with 10,000 old things I barely knew. Kinda dents yer head.